Art Hotels

A former bank on the Lower East Side, restored rather than gutted, Nine Orchard keeps the weight of its 1912 architecture in plain view. The arched windows, the terracotta detailing and the vaulted ground-floor rooms were treated as the primary artwork of the project, and the restoration work was slow enough that the building sat empty for years while it was underway.

Inside, the art programme leans toward commissioned and mid-century pieces rather than a headline collection, hung so that the original plasterwork still reads. Guest rooms are quieter than the public floors — timber, soft colour, generous ceiling height — which makes the walk down through the corridors feel like leaving one register for another.

• Restored 1912 bank building
• Commissioned and mid-century works
• Vaulted ground-floor rooms

Le A sits a short walk from the Champs-Élysées in the 8th arrondissement, and it is small enough that its design concept touches every surface. The hotel was conceived around a black-and-white scheme with contemporary works set into it, a decision that gives the corridors and lounge an unusually graphic quality for a Paris townhouse of this scale.

Rooms are compact by intention and arranged around a lounge and library that function as the hotel's centre of gravity. Guests tend to describe the stay in terms of contrast — a quiet, monochrome interior directly behind one of the busiest stretches of the city.

• Eighth arrondissement townhouse
• Monochrome design scheme
• Lounge and library at the centre

A castle estate in the Chianti hills, Castello del Nero carries frescoes that predate the hotel by several centuries and have been conserved rather than refreshed. Some are visible in the public rooms, others in individual suites, and the restoration is deliberately legible: you can see where the original pigment stops.

The surrounding estate — vineyards, olive groves, a long approach through cypress — is as much part of the property as the building. It works at a slower pace than an urban art hotel: the collection is fixed, tied to the walls, and the rest of the stay is arranged around it.

• Historic frescoes conserved in place
• Chianti estate setting
• Suites within a castle structure